On April 13, 2019, Army Maj. Crystal Kelley and Navy Lt. Christopher Bunag had stopped at a rest station on the side of Highway 62 in El Paso, Texas.
The two Uniformed Services University (USU) Graduate School of Nursing students found themselves in this remote area, surrounded mostly by desert, on their way to do some sight-seeing. It was a day off from their clinical rotation at the Mendoza Pediatric Clinic at the William Beaumont Army Medical Center at Fort Bliss, Texas.
It had been a day off in the midst of a two-week clinical rotation, as part of the GSN's Doctor of Nursing Practice/Family Nurse Practitioner program. The two students were off to explore the Carlsbad Caverns, about two hours away, and had made a pit stop to get out of the rain. They were just making their way back out of the rest station, ready to get back on the road, when they heard a loud blast near the front of the building. They walked outside to investigate and came upon the gruesome scene of a collision between a minivan and a pick-up truck. The pick-up truck appeared to have drifted into a nearby parking space, while the minivan had slid into a pole in front of the rest stop. The minivan was heavily damaged and smoke was billowing out of its engine.
Without hesitation, the students took action, as Kelley directed a bystander to call 911 and stay on the line, while Bunag began to do a quick triage, assessing the passengers to see who was in the most need of help.
At that time, they heard a woman yell from the van, "Help my baby." Bunag and another bystander quickly reached inside the van through a broken window, and the mother handed them her young child, who was unresponsive. Bunag instructed the bystander to take the child a safe distance away from the scene, under an awning, sheltered from the rain.